A known vehicle instrument for indicating various information on a vehicle (hereinafter referred to as vehicle information), such as vehicle speed, engine speed, water temperature and oil pressure, is, for example, a pointer indication type instrument that indicates measured quantity showing the vehicle information by rotating on a display plate a pointer coupled to a driving main body, including a combination meter containing a speed meter, a tachometer and a fuel gauge in a case body, and an additional meter, containing a single analog meter main body in a case, for monitoring the vehicle information separately from the combination meter.
Such a vehicle instrument is expected to have a novel design. A known example of such a design is to cause the vehicle instrument to perform a mood enhancement operation (non-display operation) different from displaying the vehicle information, in response to ON-input or OFF-input of a vehicle ignition switch (power switch). Examples of this mood enhancement operation include: rotating the pointer along a scale of the display plate from a zero position to a maximum position and then returning the pointer to the zero position; providing dedicated illuminating sources to the pointer and a scale plate and activating the illuminating light sources at slightly different times in response to ON of the IGN switch; and gradually changing the intensity of the illuminating light sources. Examples of such a vehicle instrument are disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2.